By C1 Staff
SPRINGFIELD, Ill. — The Illinois Department of Corrections has been paying some of the most money in employee overtime in the last five years than other state agencies.
RRStar reports that the DOC paid over $320 million in employee over time and compensatory payments over a five-year period.
Officials with the largest public employee union, politicians and prison-reform advocates see excessive overtime as a symptom of dangerous understaffing, while corrections officials have said for years that it’s an unwelcome but manageable strain on the system.
Gov. Bruce Rauner has yet to name a new director of corrections and though he acknowledged a staffing problem within the prison system, he has yet to announce how many new officers he plans to hire.
He has spoken before about reforming the parole system to help reduce the prisoner population, and last week called for a panel to recommend a possible overhaul of the state’s criminal justice system.
Last year, the DOC paid $71.6 million, adding up to about 6 percent of the overall $1.3 billion budget. This was actually down from 2013, where the DOC paid $72.7 million.
The number of correctional workers is down by almost a quarter since 2001, while the prison population has been growing.
Officials have argued that there are new procedures in place to attempt to cut down on overtime, but the payouts to those who work long 16-hour days are justifiable in many cases.
They say it’s difficult to predict sick days or other events that leave facilities short-staffed. The DOC was also recently hit by a larger number of retirements.
Staff are given the option of compensatory pay in addition to overtime, where they can take extra vacation days or comp time for working extra hours. Staff can cash those hours in each year. Officials said they do not include comp time payments when calculating overtime.
When stripped of those payments, total overtime numbers for the past five years add up to $270 million.